PNC Bank and The Kresge Foundation have announced $57.3 million in financing to support the conversion of the Liberal Arts and Immaculata buildings on the Marygrove Conservancy campus in Detroit into K-12 facilities for the School at Marygrove.
The building conversions are a phase of the evolving P-20 education continuum funded by the Kresge Foundation in Troy, which is on the site of the former Marygrove College. PNC, which operates its regional offices in Troy, is providing the financing through a combination of lending and tax credits as part of its Main Street banking model, which is built to support the unique needs of its local communities.
“Over the years, PNC and the Kresge Foundation have collaborated on a number of significant efforts to benefit Detroit and Wayne County residents, including $2.5 million in joint grants to support improvements in early childhood education facilities in Detroit in collaboration with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation,” says Ric DeVore, PNC regional president for Detroit and southeast Michigan.
“This transformational project, which will serve hundreds of school-aged children and their families, will play a significant role in revitalizing and providing critical resources to the Livernois-McNichols community.”
Established in 2018, the Marygrove Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that manages operations and stewards a 53-acre former Marygrove College campus in northwest Detroit. It is being designed in collaboration with the surrounding Livernois-McNichols community as an educational, economic, and civic anchor in its revitalization.
The continuum ultimately will span prenatal to pre-K, in the Marygrove Early Education Center, operated by Starfish Family Services; K-12 in the School at Marygrove under Detroit Public Schools Community District in collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Education; post-secondary graduate education; and wrap-around services and community engagement programs.
At full capacity, the school will serve roughly 1,000 Detroit children and their families, primarily living in the Livernois-McNichols neighborhoods. The PNC Foundation provided the conservancy with a $40,000 grant to support the early education center, which opened for 144 children and their families last September.
“This project is a testament to partnerships between institutions and the surrounding community,” says Rip Rapson, president and CEO of Kresge. “The engagement of PNC to provide financing for the ongoing development of the Liberal Arts Building is assurance that the Marygrove P-20 project will continue to move ahead at full speed.”
This year, kindergarten classes will open on campus in the renovated Immaculata High School/Bates Academy building, and the school will see its first graduating class in spring 2023. A PNC mobile branch — 30 feet long and on wheels — will be on campus every other week to provide financial products and services to the local community.
“PNC’s support of the groundbreaking P-20 educational ecosystem is a vital part of Marygrove’s transformation into a campus for the community,” says Tom Lewand, CEO of the Marygrove Conservancy. “Partners like PNC help make access and opportunity to the many assets at Marygrove available to children and families around campus and throughout the city.”
PNC provided financing for the education project through a collaborative effort between its Public Finance business, which provided a $50 million loan; and its Tax Credit Solutions group, a PNC Real Estate business, which provided a $7.3 million equity investment for the Liberal Arts Building renovation through the Historic Tax Credit (HTC) program. The Liberal Arts building, with its limestone façade in the Gothic Collegiate style, opened in 1927 for the first classes offered on the current Marygrove site in Northwest Detroit.
The investment is comprised of a $50 million loan from PNC’s public finance business and a $7.3 million equity investment from its tax credit solutions.
